


Roll the Dice

by chibi_nightowl



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Dragons hoard the strangest things, Games and Collectibles, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Visions and Sight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 14:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15708672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_nightowl/pseuds/chibi_nightowl
Summary: “I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I hope this is to your taste,” Tim said, stooping over to pick up the bag and retrieve the candle. He stuck the end into the creamy frosting, his eyes burning with some unknown desire. “Happy birthday, Jason. Make a wish.”





	Roll the Dice

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thanks to comicroute for beta reading this and helping me get it out in time for Jason's birthday! This guy needs all the love after the crap he's been put through in the comics recently.
> 
> Tumblr prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _I am a dragon who collects pretty things, you're a kind local game shop owner who always shows me the prettiest dice when I come in and I'm not sure if you're staring at me because you can see through my glamour AU._

The little set of bells over the door jingled as a customer walked into the small shop. Jason barely looked up from his book, a pencil in hand as he underlined sentences and scribbled in the margins. “Welcome,” he said by rote, sparing a glance at the dark haired young man who’d just entered. Classes may have just ended for the summer, but the life of a literature graduate student was never ending. Too many books, not enough time.

Luckily, the owner of the game shop didn’t mind if he read on the clock, not as long as everything was clean and where it belonged. Weekdays were slow as hell while the weekends could be described as a Category 5 hurricane. Thank god he only had to close because if there was one thing Jason hated, it was dealing with people. The worst of the chaos was over and long gone by this time his shift started, leaving only the most dedicated of RPG gamers at the table in the back of the store.

Those guys he could deal with. They were polite and always took the hint that when he started taking out the trash it was time for them to leave.

The customer stopped right in front of the counter Jason sat behind and knelt, staring intently at the dice that were kept there along with some of the more expensive collectible items the owner sold. He lowered his book and waited, wondering which dice he’d be asked to take out for closer inspection. The man was mostly hidden by the counter, but his horns rose up high enough to be seen clearly.

Wait, what? Horns?

This was a game shop so Jason was used to odd characters, and considered himself an oddity as well, but horns were something new. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose to make sure he was seeing things clearly.

Yep. Those were horns. Not those costume horns that some of the cosplayers wore when they came in for an event either, or even the plastic ones that one of the regular gamers wore on their headbands.

These were honest to god horns, rising right up out of the man’s mop of black hair.

Jason could hear him cooing over the dice, muttering something about pretty shinies. “Uh, can I help you with something?” he asked, leaning over slightly to get a better look.

It wasn’t often that his second sight kicked in. The last time it did, it was because of the nest of pixies that had started roosting in the stairwell leading up to the roof of his cheap apartment building. They loved the milk Jason left for them and gave him gifts of little stones and coins they found out on the streets. The coins were useful; the rocks, not so much.

A pair of icy blue eyes glanced up, pupils slit like a cat’s. “Sorry, I always get distracted by the dice when I come to shops like these,” the horned man said, standing upright. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“You new to the area then?” Jason asked. “I haven’t seen you in here before. Unless you’re a weekender…”

The man nodded, his horns bobbing easily despite the added weight on his slender neck. “New to Gotham, actually. I’ll be starting at Gotham University as an adjunct professor for the fall semester.”

“That’s almost three months away,” Jason said, eyeing the man closely. What was he? He seemed friendly enough, even personable, which was just all kinds of off for the supernatural creatures that made Gotham their home. “Besides, you look a bit young to be a professor.”

Sharp fangs glistened under the fluorescent lights as the man grinned. “I hear that all the time. Trust me when I say I’m older than I look.”

Jason tried not to stare, which was really hard because chances were likely this was a being who could eat him and not lose any sleep over it. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said instead and gestured to the case. “Is there anything I can take out for you?”

The horned man’s gaze dropped to the case, then flickered back up to Jason. “Yes, actually there is. Those teal dice, can I get a better look at them?”

~*~*~

Tim wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the young man from the game shop he’d wandered into after settling into the old brownstone he’d rented for his time in Gotham. One thing he did know was that buying those teal dice had been a no brainer after he got a good look at the other man’s eyes.

Those were eyes saw much more than they let on. And if the slightly elevated heart rate and the startled scent that tickled his nose were right, then he’d seen right through Tim’s glamour.

A glamour that had been carefully crafted and honed to protect him in the human world for more than three centuries. Even amongst the Fae, a dragon stood out. So the fact that a human saw him for who he was made him curious. Very curious. It was entirely possible the man didn’t know he was Fae-touched. Which, considering the shock of white hair on his brow, was surprising.

The next week, he went back to the shop to get another look at the interesting human. And, just like before, Tim found himself distracted by all the colorful dice in the display case. This happened to him _every single time_ he walked into a game store. It didn’t matter that these were just pieces of resin and plastic, hardly anything a dragon of his caliber should notice. The shine, glitter, and glimmering colors made his fingers itch and his hoarding instincts rise to the surface.

He had plenty of dice and game pieces in his hoard, many of which he’d even carved himself and, with a little bit of magic, melted his scales around to create a rich, shimmery blue that reminded him of the ocean meeting the evening sky. Those were priceless.

These little pieces of plastic were not.

But the colors…ruby reds that glinted with gold, sea green melded together with the emerald of a forest, blacks shot through with silver. If the smaller dice were bad, then the larger 20-sided dice were the worst. Tim spotted a new one he hadn’t seen last week, a teal one that perfectly matched the odd human’s eyes.

He had to have it.

“You must really like dice,” the human said, interrupting Tim’s covetous thoughts.

Looking up, he saw the young man was leaning over the counter to watch him, a smirk teasing the corners of his lips. He swallowed hard, staring into those vibrant eyes that were so out of place on a mere mortal. What was he?

“I like the colors,” Tim admitted as he stood to gaze at the human on more level ground. “The palettes have changed so much since I first started playing.”

A dragon who played Wizards and Warriors. What was this world coming to?

“Never played myself, but you’re hardly the first person to wander in here and get distracted by them. Although, I think you’re the first one I’ve heard call them _shinies_.”

Tim bit his lip and tried not to laugh. “How can you work in a place like this and not play?”

The young man shrugged his broad shoulders. “I started here as a favor to the owner when I was about eighteen. He was having problems with some of the kids stealing things and since I’m a former thief, he thought I might be able to scare the crap out of them.”

“How does that logic work?” Tim couldn’t help asking. “I understand the whole ‘takes a thief to catch a thief’, but the rest?”

“He’s known me for almost a decade now. If I spotted some asshole puttin' something they hadn’t paid for in their pockets, I’d just pick it right back out before they left. Besides, I have no interest in any of the stuff here and the boss knows it. I think it’s all crap for people with too much money and time on their hands.”

Tim let himself laugh at the clearly disgusted expression on the human’s face. “I might be willing to argue that point, but since I’m about to drop some more money in here, that defeats the purpose.”

“Whatever rocks your world,” the human replied, his smirk morphing into a brief grin that did incredible things to his eyes.

Tim wanted to fall into them and explore their depths. Not yet, though. He needed to assess and strategize first, as well as find out some more information about this intriguing person. For that, he needed his name. “I can think of a lot of things that do,” he said easily and pointed at the large 20-sided dice. “Like that. I’m Tim, by the way. Tim Drake.”

His current pseudonym rolled off his tongue. Ironically, it was closer to his real name than any of the other names he’d gone by over the centuries.

The human unlocked the case and offered him a crooked half smile as he knelt to retrieve the dice. “Jason Todd.”

How did that saying go? Oh, yes. _Bingo._

~*~*~

Jason didn’t see Tim again until the following week when he wandered in on a Thursday night about twenty minutes before closing time. It would be a big fat lie to say he hadn’t been thinking about the man off and on over the last week. The horns and slitted blue eyes captured his attention like nothing else, making him switch up his usual reading material to tackle Spenser’s _The Faerie Queen_. It seemed appropriate, even if epic poetry gave him a headache.

He kind of wished there was a bestiary that was actually _accurate_ for the supernatural. By all rights, Tim looked like some kind of demon, but he didn’t feel inherently evil or dark. That and he’d first come into the shop in the middle of the day, so there went the Dark Fae idea he’d tossed around and quickly rejected. His sight was more than just vision, but intuition too, which came in handy when he lived on the streets.

“Hello, Jason,” Tim said as he entered. “You’re always here when I come in. Don’t you ever get a day off?”

Jason set aside his book and fiddled with his glasses. Small talk? Really? “I try and pick up as many hours as I can in the summer between school terms. Makes the owner happy since he doesn’t have to hire anyone else.”

“It must pick up quite a bit, what with everyone on vacation. Do you guys host any of those card games the kids seem to like?”

This was so surreal. Jason nodded and pointed toward the right of the door at all the fliers that hung there. “We have those and some tabletop gaming. Wizards and Warlocks, I think?”

“Wizards and Warriors,” Tim corrected with a smile. A hint of fang peeked out from under his lip and Jason cleared his throat, looking away as something tightened in his chest.

“So, what brings you in tonight?” he asked, shoving aside the strange feeling. He pointedly tapped his fingers on the countertop.

Sure enough, Tim’s gaze was directed to the gaming dice and other paraphernalia in the glass display. It was rather amusing how easy it was to distract him, kind of like giving a crow something shiny.

“I’m here for a rulebook,” Tim replied after a long moment, clearly fighting the impulse to get a better look. “I don’t think I packed it.”

“Isn’t that stuff online?” Jason rose from his stool to head toward the back of the shop where all the gaming books were carefully arranged and alphabetized. Games may not be his thing, but books were books.

Tim followed on silent feet. “Yes, but I like having something to hold on to. The online materials make things a lot easier, I’ll admit that, but you could say I’m a bit old-fashioned.”

Jason wondered how old Tim really was. This was the second allusion he’d made to being older than he looked.

“Well, everything we have is right here, so knock yourself out. If we don’t have what you’re lookin’ for, I can order it, but it’ll probably be faster if you do it yourself.”

There was that flash of fang again as Tim picked up one of the books and started to flip through it. “Now where’s the fun in that? There’s a certain amount of joy in the hunt, in seeking out whatever it is you’re searching for.”

Jason had no words with which to reply, so he simply shrugged and walked back to the counter. The entire way, he would have sworn he felt Tim’s weighted gaze on him, but when he sat back down and picked up his own book, the other man was immersed in his own. A shiver prickled its way down his spine. He had the distinct feeling Tim had not been speaking about a book when he said he was on the hunt.

~*~*~

Tim growled and paced around his bedroom, claws digging into the palm of his hands. What under the light was wrong with him? He’d come to Gotham to _work_ , to find some relief from the monotonous tedium that was his life, not find himself attracted to a human with the most stunning pair of eyes he’d ever seen, even hidden as they were behind a pair of glasses that he was willing to bet his favorite ruby over Jason not needing in the slightest.

Eyes that he craved with every ounce of his being, whether they were lost and far away in the books Jason was reading every time he saw him, or laughing in amusement at some smart comment or joke Tim made. He wanted to see their full range, hazy from sleep when Jason first woke up to bright and fiery from the passion that was stoked within.

Who was he trying to kid? He didn’t want just Jason’s eyes. No, he wanted all of him.

Jason Todd was a mystery and Tim was never one to pass up a good puzzle.

Armed with his name, Tim started his search. It didn’t take very long, not with his computer skills. He was definitely an oddity amongst the Fae for even using human technology, but it’s not like a computer could hurt him. He found Jason’s juvenile records first, the ones that placed him in a detention center for a few years because of his sticky fingers. Apparently, they were necessary too, because his home life had been less than ideal. It consisted of a father who was never around and then later killed in prison and a mother who wasn’t actually his mother, according to the birth certificate he unearthed.

His real mother’s name was known to Tim. It was a name he did not like at all, not after what she’d done to betray the earthbound Fae to a fiend known only as the Joker. The thought briefly crossed his mind to use Jason to get his revenge on her, but he shunted it aside as pointless. Sheila Haywood was slowly wasting away, drooling and mindless, in an asylum outside of Liverpool.

How she came to have a child though, that intrigued him more. Jason was clearly abandoned and left to be raised by humans, unaware of the gifts that were in his blood, wild talents that awaited only the right time to manifest themselves.

So this was where he found himself, pacing and trying to figure out what to do. Did he give in to his baser instincts and simply lay claim to Jason, dragging him across an ocean to his primary residence in Scotland? Or did he do this the human way and properly court the man, slowly and carefully revealing only that which he wanted him to know until the time came for Jason to become his?

Tim fell back on his overly plush bed and draped an arm over his eyes. Dramatic, yes, but he was feeling it at the moment. He didn’t really have much of a choice in this, not if he wanted Jason to come to him willingly. Which was going to be hard because the human was more interested in his books than him. There was a quaint human phrase that he'd heard bandied about rather often these days and he thought it rather appropriate to his circumstances.

This sucked.

~*~*~

Jason could often be said to have his head stuck in the clouds considering all the time he spent reading, but he was a Gotham street-rat born and raised. That meant he was paranoid as hell about his surroundings at any given time, even tucked away in a relatively safe place like the game shop. So he couldn’t help but notice that, week after week, he saw more and more of Tim.

Not that this was a bad thing, because he still didn’t know exactly what the man was, and it kept his mind engaged as he tried to puzzle it out. The long, curled horns were as black as Tim’s hair, matte while his hair shone like a raven’s wing. Delicately pointed ears made Jason think elf, but he’d never read of an elf with horns before, or sharp white fangs and black claws that matched the horns. Honestly though, it was Tim’s pale blue eyes that had him the most curious.

What did he see when he looked at him?

A poor, not-quite-starving graduate student, that’s what. Jason shoved aside the thoughts of Tim seeing him as anything other than a curiosity. That’s why he had to be coming back here, right? What else was could it be since there were only so many bags of dice, rulebooks, and games the man could purchase each time he came in.

The next time Jason saw him, he would speak up. Call him out on this little charade that had been going on for weeks now.

Satisfied with his decision, Jason went to work. There was a bit of a rush that afternoon from a tide of incoming students who moved back into their dorms for the soon-to-start fall semester. It kept him busy and by the time seven o’clock came, the store was empty.

The peace and quiet didn’t last long. Jason was in the back with the gamebooks when he heard the bells over the door jingle, announcing someone entering the shop.

“Welcome,” he said, standing up straight to see who had come in. His throat suddenly became parched as the desert as he took in the sight of Tim.

Unlike all the other times Tim had visited the shop, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, this time he wore something entirely different. Snug black pants gripped his lean waist, seemingly painted onto his lower body as they left little room for imagination. He still wore a t-shirt, but the electric blue was muted by the long-sleeved mesh top he wore over it. Jason was pretty sure there were leather boots involved as well, but he was too trapped by Tim's intense gaze.

“Hello, Jason,” Tim said, greeting him as he normally did, like he wasn’t dressed up to hit some club after he left. “I’m both saddened and glad to see you’re working tonight.”

Jason tried to swallow, unable to look away as Tim stalked slowly toward him. It took him a few attempts to find his voice. “Why’s that?”

Tim held up a small plastic bag that he somehow overlooked. “I understand it’s your birthday. I’d hoped you would be out with friends, but I will admit this works better for my plans. I brought you a treat. Hope you like it.”

Wait, what? “How did you know it’s my birthday? I didn’t even know it was.” It was not uncommon for him to forget. He didn’t have many friends around who cared enough to celebrate with him, so why bother?

“I have my sources,” Tim replied evasively. “Here.” He handed the bag to him, his fingers brushing Jason’s hand ever so lightly.

He shuddered slightly under the touch, so foreign and yet…welcomed at the same time. Opening the bag, he found a small bakery box and a candle. The bag fell to the floor as he unsealed the box, revealing what looked like a red velvet cupcake.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I hope this is to your taste,” Tim said, stooping over to pick up the bag and retrieve the candle. He stuck the end into the creamy frosting, his eyes burning with some unknown desire. “Happy birthday, Jason. Make a wish.”

Jason swallowed again, remembering his promise to himself about the next time he saw Tim. Time to roll the dice. “Got a lighter? I need to blow out the candle first.”

The smirk that appeared on Tim’s face was downright devilish as he leaned in, pursing his lips. A small jet of fire erupted from between them, lighting the candle in an instant.

“I knew it,” Jason breathed. “I fucking knew it.”

The smirk grew into a pleased grin. “Just as I knew you see much more than what I present to the world. But have you guessed what I really am yet?”

He was about to shake his head, but stopped, thinking back to the beginning of the summer when Tim first visited the shop and his complete and utter distraction with the dice in the display. He’d compared it back then to a crow and a shiny object, but really, it was more like… “A dragon,” Jason said firmly. “You’re a dragon.”

Tim’s smiled grew and there was the flash of fang that had been driving him nuts all summer. He cupped Jason’s hands in his own and raised the cupcake and it’s still burning candle higher. “I am. Does this bother you?”

Far from it. Jason now realized what the tightening in his stomach was each time he saw Tim. It was _desire_. Finally, he had met someone who was just as odd as him. Odder, even, because those horns were front and center as Tim tilted his head back ever so slightly to watch him. “Not in the slightest,” he replied.

“Good. Now make a wish. Don’t tell me what it is because I want to spend the rest of your life trying to figure it out.”


End file.
